


Special Topics in Dessometrics

by mayhap



Category: Midnighters - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayhap/pseuds/mayhap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gradationally counteracting embitterments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Special Topics in Dessometrics

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Minna Leigh (minnaleigh)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minnaleigh/gifts).



One of Dess's least useful abilities was sensing the exact moment that 11:59 rolled over into midnight, every single night.

Here in Stillwater, Oklahoma, home to such heinousnesses† as the Oklahoma State Cowboys and the nation's largest student-organized pep rally, she didn't even get to live in the 216,000 seconds underneath the dark moon where she could have made use of some of her _other_ abilities, like, say, slaying monsters with alphanumerics.† It all washed over her in that single picosecond like a wave of funny-tasting Bixby water and almost convinced her that _homesickness_ wasn't just a twelve-letter word.

She washed it down with a swig of coffee - black, of course, like her wardrobe and her sense of humor. These days, it wasn't good enough to stay up until midnight, not while she was taking both Calc III and DiffEq, constructing and programming her battlebot, affectionately known as Pestiferously Exteroceptive Terrorization,‡ and oh yeah, inventing a whole new branch of mathematics in her spare time. Hence, coffee.

It was 2:43 AM, her overprotected† roommate had finally subsided into snoring, and Dess was still hunched over her laptop, its screen set to the dimmest brightness setting to shield her photonegative† eyes, procrastinating on her calc homework by playing with Mathematica, when she got the email.

> ` From: 5805550169@txt.att.net`  
>  To: dessometrical@gmail.com  
>  Subject: o canada  
>  Date: 12 January 2008 08:42:13 -0700
> 
> it tastes really good up here of course that might be because the drinking age is 19. no slithers out tonite they really dont like the cold i guess

The second email dinged into her inbox before she could send an expostulating† response.

> `From: 5805550169@txt.att.net`  
>  To: dessometrical@gmail.com  
>  Subject: numbers  
>  Date: 12 January 2008 08:44:50 -0700
> 
> 43 47 57 n 79 23 00 w xoxo the bitch goddess

Dess plugged the coordinates into Google Earth so she could record this new data point. Like all of the mindcaster's road trip reports, it was horribly sketchy and unscientific - what on earth was she supposed to do with the fact that a given set of coordinates tasted like ashes and regret, for heaven's sake? - but at least it gave her something to work with as she tried out all of the shiny new implements in her mathematical toolbox on the complexifying† question of the blue time.

The first time Melissa had gotten back in contact with Dess, it was right after midnight and she was practically hyperventilating with hysteria. That was about right, Dess had thought, as the Bitch Goddess dumped on her in one breathless run-on sentence. It took a pretty desperate situation for Melissa to actually admit how much she had depended on Dess's expert metallurgy and her other polymath skills back before she had up and left town.

"Put Jonathan on," Dess had said, a little stiffly. It wasn't like she and Flyboy were best friends forever, but at least she didn't kind of wish she could gut him with a piece of nice clean steel sometimes.

The response on the other end of the line was a burst of sobbing so ragged that at first Dess thought it was some kind of cell phone static. "I can't taste him at all," Melissa wailed. "They just came out of nowhere. I didn't even feel them coming, not a single taste."

Dess had stayed calm. Somebody had to, anyway. "I'm sure he's fine. He can _fly_ , you know," she said, tartly. "Where are you?"

"I don't know!"

If Dess could have hacked into the cell phone satellites, she would have been able to triangulate Melissa's position, but even she wasn't that good. At least, not yet. "In a city? In a town? In the middle of nowhere?"

Melissa hiccupped. "On the edge of town."

"Good. Go find the junkyard and arm yourself," Dess said. It was the obvious, logical thing to do. Even Melissa probably would have thought of it if it weren't for the total deoxygenation† of her brain.

She was about to hang up when Melissa protested. "But then what do I _do_?" she demanded.

"What do you think this is, the polymath technical support hotline?" Dess responded irritably. Still, she supposed she couldn't leave Melissa and possibly Jonathan to the mercies of some kind of crazy ninja darklings who'd learned to keep their dusty old minds quiet and flavorless so they could eat mindcasters for dessert. She sighed and started walking Melissa through how to use a soldiering iron, where to buy a soldering iron in the first place, and how use the soldiering iron to turn a piece of good clean metal into an asskicking aversion-filled weapon.

"How's Rex?" Melissa caught her right before she was about to set the receiver down for the second time.

"Still crazy," Dess had said. "I'll be sure to tell him that you're still a bitch."

That time, she had actually hung up.

The thing was, the mindcaster hadn't stopped calling her. The first time, she told Dess that she and Flyboy were okay and then hung up, which, considering the source, might as well have been a thank you note. A few weeks later, she had phoned up with the story of meeting her first baby polymath in the middle of West Virginia, a big-eyed four-year-old girl with a stuffed rabbit named Tomboyishness. Dess wouldn't have admitted it for the world, but she actually started looking forward to those calls.

"Do you have an address?" Dess had demanded one night, cutting off Melissa's rambling story about getting lost in a cave.

"Of course, just forward all my mail to 1 Crappy Old Car, Anytown, U.S.A."

"Seriously," Dess had said crossly. "I want to send you something."

"Well, I don't know how," Melinda had huffed. Jonathan snatched the phone from her.

"Just address it to special delivery," he said. "We're going to be staying here for a few more days at least."

Dess had swathed her beloved Geostationary in soft packing material and overnighted it to Flyboy and the Bitch Goddess, Special Delivery, along with a note, saying _Send me all your numbers or else_. Melissa had started feeding her back coordinates, turning all the places and people and stories into numbers, and Dess tracked them all carefully on her map back at home.

Google Earth told her that tonight the roadtripping duo were taking advantage of Canada's lower drinking age in King City, Ontario, just north of Toronto. With a little more research she narrowed in on Eaton Hall, a fancy castle that was apparently haunted, objects disappearing and then, just as mysteriously, reappearing.

Dess repressed a snort of laughter. Obviously mischievous midnighters at work.

She took out one of her three-inch stainless-steel straight pin, whispered its name, Codiscoverers,† and stuck it into the gorgeous homolographic† map she kept on her wall. Then she got back to doing the math.

* * *

### Appendix

#### Thirteen Trisdecologisms

 **Alphanumerics:** a character set that includes letters and numbers

 **Codiscoverers:** ones who first come to the knowledge of something together

 **Complexifying:** generating complexity

 **Deoxygenation:** the act of depriving of oxygen

 **Dessometrical:** pertaining to the field of Dessometrics

 **Expostulating:** demanding vehemently

 **Exteroceptive:** capable of receiving and responding to outside stimuli

 **Heinousnesses:** grossly wicked or reprehensible; abominations

 **Homolographic:** maintaining the ratio of parts

 **Overprotected:** sheltered

 **Pestiferously:** annoyingly

 **Photonegative:** repelled by light; exhibiting a negative phototactic or phototropic response

 **Terrorization:** the act of inspiring with fear


End file.
